High score of the season

[Zme]

Thanks,

in reading that i have to agree with Chris is me, it sounds like a very fine line to walk, very very hard to tell the difference so i guess it would depend on the ref

[Chris is me]

My other 2 cents.

If you're still stuck in the mindset that defense = pushing, you'll not only surely lose against 469, but in most Breakaway matches.

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Though to be completely fair, intentional destruction and hard, "wasn't legal until 2009 but is now" ramming defense isn't something you can tell the difference between.

To be perfectly honest, we were willing to ram teams to play defense until we were called out on it (which we weren't). That was one of the fun parts of facing off against mechanum drives this year.

Although we did get an email from the NJ regional about the torn up carpet, broken pieces of lexan, and the fact that we moved the bump several times during matches. Woops. Won't happen again.

[Austin2046]

i searched youtube and found this... not the best quality... but you can see how 469 does it...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJh_tb9Ox6A

[sparrowkc]

Somebody found video of it:

Originally Posted by leftylink

Hey guys,

So I did some digging on youtube, and there are a few videos on 469. They're kinda low quality, but you take what you can get...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJh_tb9Ox6A - Semis #2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXTSVZJcaYc - Finals #1

My first thought is that the best defense against this is to climb onto the bump right next to their tower. This way they can only deflect towards one goal, which your goalie can sit in front of. Then all you have to do is win the match with a single offensive robot...

[dodar]

Ya against this have someone park in front of the goal and have the other pester 469 by getting on the tower, then just keep scoring on the other side

[Chris Hibner]

Originally Posted by Cory

Attempting to stop the balls from rolling into the goals after 469 deflects them is never going to work. You have to take balls out of their loop. If you're the defensive bot in their zone you HAVE to clear balls out to midfield or your own scoring zone. If you just run back and forth trying to keep the balls from rolling into the goals you're constantly going to be playing 1v2 and trying to keep 2 opponents from scoring, or you'll be totally neutralized by one bot while the other scores at will.

If they have 8 or 12 balls and they're cycling them every 4-8 seconds, you're done.

Our robot was designed from the beginning the have the same function as 469. We've been keeping our mouth shut in the "Ultimate Game Breaker Bot" until the cat was out of the bag on this strategy. But anyway, we've put a lot of thought into the strategy and the "throughput cycle" as we call it.

There are a number of issue with defending it. I'm still going to keep my mouth shut on most of them. However, I just want to point out one thing: you don't need 8-12 balls in the cycle. Not even close. Depending on how fast your human player is and how well you box out, all you need is 3-5 balls in the cycle- any more than that won't increase your score.

[David Dawson]

469 can be stopped with a simple strategy. Just "hit them" the ball only sits 3" inside of the the ramp. So when we played them in the Cass tech finals 305 gave them a slight tap to knock the balls off their ramp and it worked just about every single time....Only problem was we couldn't stop 217 from scoring, and lets face it those guys can win a match 3 vs 1.

[JesseK]

The counter to the counter of this strategy simply takes all three robots on offense. 469 redirects, one team mate pins the defense, the other team mate cleans up. Swap up who pins the defense when necessary. Start with the 6 balls from auton in the forward zone and it's pretty much a sealed deal. The only counter to that strategy would be a 148/1114/etc type of bot how can grab the ball and kick it 2 zones away very quickly using a good drive train and kicker.

[Thuperscout]

Originally Posted by David Dawson

469 can be stopped with a simple strategy. Just "hit them" the ball only sits 3" inside of the the ramp. So when we played them in the Cass tech finals 305 gave them a slight tap to knock the balls off their ramp and it worked just about every single time....Only problem was we couldn't stop 217 from scoring, and lets face it those guys can win a match 3 vs 1.

Thanks. But in the finals didn't team 308 get red carded for trying that srategy? For hitting 469 while they were in contact with the tower? I'm almost positive they did... and a red card wiped their score.. So that strategy is out.

[David Dawson]

That did happen only because they where hitting in the last 20 seconds.

[Don Wright]

We thank everyone for all the compliments/comments about our robot. However, without 217 and 2960, it wouldn't have happened.

2960 played awesome offensive zone defense and 217 basically stole every ball on the field and scored them... There is a reason this was 217's second win in 2010 already and they went undefeated this weekend... They are unbelievable...

Thanks for picking us 217 and it was fun to play with 2960 finally!

See everyone in Troy, MSC, and ATL...

[ThunderKate]

It was you guys who were absolutely amazing Don. We make quite the team huh? (:

[JGurnow]

Originally Posted by David Dawson

That did happen only because they where hitting in the last 20 seconds.

In the last 20 seconds, plus the 10 seconds after the match ends where balls are still called, that is 5-6 balls that will have been scored. During all of elims 469 scored at least 1 ball after the match ended and 3 in one of the cases.

As long as an alliance can maintain possession of there balls and return them quickly to their home zone they can score large amounts.

You also need to think about how during that match 2 blue robots were trying to stop 1 red robot from scoring. There was one robot preventing the defender from being effective and there was still a second scoring robot that was uncontested while blue had a single robot scoring and no other robot to return the balls from mid zone to. Having a deflector bot in mid zone is a good strategy, even if they don't score you maintain control of the balls.

The human players start to bottleneck when you are scoring more then 6 balls quickly, so as long you maintain all the balls you get into your zone from auton you can score very well.

[BJC]

Originally Posted by ThunderKate

It was you guys who were absolutely amazing Don. We make quite the team huh? (:

I'll say...

I have a feeling this will not be the end of the los chickens...
If 217 seeds first at Troy and / or the Michigan Champs you will ofcourse pick them again.